Today’s Guest

“By teaching patients how to use medical marijuana for their specific medical condition, patients have come back to me and told me their relationships with their wives and husbands have improved because they’re no longer irritable from being sleep deprived, they’re actually able to carry their grandchildren because they’re not hurting as much from their arthritis pain, they’re able to perform better at work because they’re no longer paralyzed by their anxiety. As a physician who has seen patients die from overdoses on opioids, benzodiazepines, and other prescription and over-the-counter medications commonly used for conditions like insomnia, anxiety, and chronic pain, I feel like I’m helping to save lives.”

Some wisdom nuggets heading your way

Patel comes from a very traditional Indian family. Her background is emergency medicine which she was set out to do. However, she found an ad for a website called medicalmarijuana.com, looking for a doctor. That triggered her curiosity and she began researching that field. Being an emergency doctor she had a lot of experience with patients in pain or patients overdosing on medications as well as patients that are drug users trying to get their fix by laying and pretending. She took a step back and decided to work at a medical marijuana clinic in 2012.

Some states in the US allow marijuana only for medical use; you need to see the doctor and get all the paperwork, but some states (eight) allow both medical and recreational use, so you can get it at any facility that is licensed for marijuana.

According to Dr. Patel medical marijuana is required to go through laboratory testing that tells us the exact amount of the chemicals. There are a lot of different chemicals in marijuana and different proportions of these chemicals will give you different effect. Second information we get from this testing is that there is no fungus or bacteria in it which is also very important. This is especially important for people that are on medications that suppress their immune system, especially cancer patients that are in chemotherapy. Third information is levels of pesticides and fungicides.

It is also important how you use marijuana; to figure out the right dose and how often to use it. Every medication, including marijuana has a sub therapeutic dose (doesn’t have any effect), toxic dose (too high) and there is therapeutic dose (enough to get the medical benefit without side effects). So, recreational users are using too much and getting the toxic effect.

It is often said that marijuana is the starter drug, but according to Dr. Patel and the research she read the substance that is actually a gateway drug is alcohol. There was also a study done that looked at drug use in many different countries and in Japan they found that by the age of 29 only 1.6% of the population had used marijuana, but 83.2% had used a listed drug by that age. Back in 2010 the research showed that a listed drug use was higher in US then it was in Netherlands.

Insomnia is one of the most common conditions in Dr. Patel’s practice, most patients have trouble falling asleep or they wake up often during the night. Many of them have turned to proscription medication, but they end up getting addicted and not feeling well when they wake up. With marijuana use, Dr. Patel finds that patients typically are able to fall asleep easier, they are able to stay asleep, if they wake up they easily fall asleep again and they wake up feeling refreshed. Marijuana doesn’t have to be used on an everyday basis, some patients use it only once a week and that helps them during the days when they are not using it; or they will use it on the day when something stressful happens that might affect their sleep and they will fall back into a regular sleep cycle. When it comes to patients with sleep apnea (episodes when you stop breathing during sleep) the interesting thing is that the studies show that marijuana helps to reduce the number of these episodes. But there is still not enough scientific research on the effects of marijuana to our sleep.

If you want to find out more about Dr. Patel or to get in touch with her go to her website: https://www.drrachnapatel.com/ , she also has a YouTube and Facebook profile where you can post any questions you might have.

How to connect with him:

FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/DoctorRachnaPatel

TWITTER: @DrRachnaPatel

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNtN7JXpNKHAYA7ZdWzpi1A

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Christine Hansen is a holistic international sleep expert, speaker, and sleep coach. She is the creator of the “5 Step Sleep Like A Boss Process” focusing on sleep foundations, gut health, thyroid issues, nutrition and hormones that helps people to fall and stay asleep without having to rely on sleeping pills.
As a certified Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, Spencer Institute Certified Sleep Science Coach and Nutritional Therapist, Christine combines emotional, lifestyle, and biochemical stress management in bespoke programmes for her clients.
Her expertise has been featured in numerous international publications, such as The Independent, The Guardian, Business Insider, Reader’s Digest, Huffington Post, Elite Daily, Entrepreneur on Fire and many more.
Christine is a mother, #1 Amazon best-selling author for her book Sleep Like A Boss - The Guide To Sleep For Busy Bosses and award- winning entrepreneur of the coup de coeur award of the Creative Young Entrepreneurs Luxembourg Awards. Christine is based in Luxembourg and fluent in English, German, French, and Luxembourgish.